I cannot get the Obamacare health insurance exchange website to work. Believe me, I tried.

As the new health insurance exchanges rolled out as part of the affordable care act, I was interested in finding out what our Obamacare rates would be if we enrolled in the new marketplace insurance.

Unfortunately, despite how easy it was supposed to be to Sign Up for Obamacare, it was a mess. And after hours of trying on multiple days to access the health insurance marketplace, I never actually did get a quote.

Obamacare Health Insurance Website Errors

Here’s a summary of all the problems I encountered while trying to get a quote on the healthcare.gov site.

First Day Errors:

Heavy volume and a long wait. Everyday, I received this message: “We have a lot of visitors on the site right now. Please stay on this page. We’re working to make the experience better, and we don’t want you to lose your place in line. We’ll send you to the login page as soon as we can. Thanks for your patience!” If only I knew how many times I would actually see this message, I might have (and should have) stopped right here.

Errors force you to start over. I finally got through, and set up an account, only to be told after I set up my account that an error occurred. Back to step one and wait in line again.

User name and password errors. Since I had already verified my username and email address, I thought I’d be able to login. Wrong, it told me it didn’t recognize my username. I had to set it up again! Back to step one and wait in line for the third time.

I ran out of time and waited a few more days to try again. More errors:

Trying again and a glimmer of hope. This time after I waited in line (how many times have I waited in line?!), my password finally worked… I thought it would be smooth sailing…

Error confirming identity. I started the application again, however, when I had to confirm my identity, it kept giving me errors (which is ironic because I sign up for credit cards all the time with no problems verifying my identity)!

Help desk wait time. I actually had to call a help desk to verify my identity over the phone! Guess what, I had to wait in line! It took a lot of time for something that should have been relatively simple. The phone rep told me the website might ask me to call again, but I should just skip that part.

Identity still not verified. After my phone call, the program told me my identity still couldn’t be verified (surprise, surprise!), but I could continue anyways. I did, just like the phone rep instructed me to. In retrospect, that was a bad idea.

Application error. After I spent over an hour filling out the application at the end of the application it told me I could sign electronically, however, I would need to verify my identity again. It sent me back to the beginning to start over. And wait in line. Again.

After quitting the process I received an email that I had a message waiting for me in the system. The email gave me a link… to wait in line. I did. And I logged in. And I couldn’t find a message anywhere in the system. Just a blank application to start all over again. And an error that my identity couldn’t be verified. I feel like I should just rent the movie Groundhog Day instead.

Giving Up on a Quote

I give up. All I wanted was a quote. That’s it. I just wanted to find out how much Obamacare would cost so I could write a nice concise article showing all of you what the process looked like and how much it quoted me for coverage. Hopefully these problems will be ironed out soon. I plan to wait a few more weeks (or months) until I get the courage to try again.

If you really need a quote, I suggest you wait until you have a large block of time available to work through the process.

Anyone else have these issues? I’m guessing I’m not the only one struggling…

Alternative Quotes

Since I never actually received a quote I found a link on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services that compiled all the premiums for the affordable healthcare act. You can access it here: Health Insurance Marketplace Premiums.

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